


Of Nights And Days

by icarus_chained



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Character Study, Destiny, Gen, History, Hope, Revolution, Royalty, power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Destiny and history, all those solid, fragile things, and the shapes they make for us to live in. Five conversations Havelock Vetinari has had across the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Nights And Days

**Destiny**

In the shadows of the throne room, the seat of kings mouldered invisibly away beneath its disguise of gilt. At its feet, the newly-minted Patrician of Ankh-Morpork stood silently and considered it.

"You know," said a voice from the darkness, cold and urbane, "I have often considered assassins to be the agents of destiny." A small smirk. "The hands of Fate, as it were?"

Havelock did not so much as flinch. "Have you, my Lord?" he murmured, with an odd note of something not-quite-respectful in his voice. The god beside him frowned briefly, a vague suspicion stirring.

"Be careful" Fate said at last, the beginnings of an ugly expression on his face. "Remember, my lord Patrician, neither power nor service will turn Fate aside. Destiny will out, in the end."

He sneered, waving his hand. For a second, the throne of Ankh rotting above them seemed to glow. To shine not with gilt but with true gold, restored and brought to new glory. A threat, a promise, a reminder of the price of defiance.

Havelock only smiled, an assassin's bloodless sword. "Yes," he murmured softly. "But I wonder, my Lord, if Destiny is perhaps more malleable than even gods understand?"

 

**History**

The Librarian clambered tiredly back down the shelves, idly patting the dust of ages from leathery paws. An eventful few days, to be sure. Dragons and kings and knowledge and power. The theft of books, and the threat of ages. Yes, an eventful few days.

"Do you ever wonder," asked the figure seated at his desk, "at mankind's obsession with history? So easily overwritten, and yet so irresistibly alluring. Curious, don't you think?"

The Librarian blinked, staring, and didn't answer immediately. The Patrician didn't look up, delicately turning a page of the tome nestled in his lap, only the faint tension in his hands to render the question as more than rhetorical. Ah, the Librarian thought. History. Kings and destiny, knowledge and power. So frail, and yet so alluring. 

He sighed, lumbering over to heave himself up onto his desk, reaching out to pluck the book carefully from pale hands. Dark eyes flicked towards his, neither temper nor fear, only a bemused sort of curiosity, and an odd, wry fondness. A man recently overthrown, a man recently reinstated, amused by the foolishness of it all.

"Ook," the Librarian told him gently, and patted his hand in simultaneous agreement and commiseration.

 

**Equality**

Susan narrowed her eyes, more unsettled than she'd admit at being seen. The man seated behind the desk raised a cool eyebrow, unaccountably amused.

"Your pardon, my dear," Vetinari said. "I have what I'm told is a regrettable tendency to see things as they are. You needn't let me detain you."

"I never do," she answered crisply, annoyed at both his sangfroid and her own reaction to it. Then she growled softly at herself. "I'll only be a few minutes. There's a monster that needs dealing with."

His expression flickered. "Ah," he murmured, oddly rueful. "But of course. There are so very many of them, aren't there?"

Susan frowned, but he shook himself before she could answer, looking up at her with a bland and curious expression once more.

"If you would permit a question first?" he asked lightly, smiling faintly at her nod. "I understand that your ... grandfather ... was said to bear a scythe for the common man, and a sword for kings. Is that still true, do you know?"

Susan raised her own eyebrow. "Would it disappoint you if the answer was no?"

His smile deepened, a child's honest belief in lies. 

"No," he said. "Not at all."

 

**Stability**

"Funny old thing, the past. Isn't it?"

The shock rolled through the man like a leviathan: vast and invisible and gone in seconds. Lu-Tze smirked faintly, rolling a cigarette with an old man's nonchalant malice.

"Your pardon?" the Patrician asked icily, letting the Commander's figure fade into the darkness as he turned instead to face the History Monk. Pain and memory and the shadows of past upheavals hung dark around him, around the lilac on his lapel, and Lu reckoned the assassin hadn't been so clear in him in years.

"I said, funny old thing, the past," he repeated amiably. "Supposed to be immutable. And yet I'm guessing it feels a bit more fragile than that right now, doesn't it?"

Vetinari said nothing. An odd expression on his face, a watchful thing that seemed to echo up across thirty years from a much younger, more innocent man. Lu-Tze sighed, shaking his head.

"Don't spread it around," he advised gently. "Time is one of those things people like to think isn't held together with spit and nails. Destiny, history. All those solid things. You know?"

And wondered why the man's answering smile suddenly made him feel every one of his years.

 

**Inevitability**

"Do you ever wonder if it was meant to end up like this?"

The King of Lancre leaned tipsily sideways, his elbow jostling the Patrician's companionably. The diplomatic function muddled itself cheerfully along without them, somewhere a few floors off. Above them, at the top of the steps, the throne of Ankh continued rotting gently away.

"Hmm?" Havelock blinked carefully. "If what was meant to end up like what?"

"You know," Verence said, waving a hand to encompass ... well, everything. "Us. Ruling. Kings and whatnot. Do you ever wonder?" 

Ah. Havelock looked at him, an old and battered friend, from back before either of them had been more than children daring each other across the wall that separated their Guilds. A Fool and an Assassin, and look what had happened. One fated king gone on to become an actor, another cheerfully playing the Captain of the Watch, and here they were. Sleeping across the doors to kingdoms, holding them together with spit and nails and power that belonged to other people.

Destiny will out, memory whispered. Destiny and history, kings and swords and axes and scythes. Immutable, unchangeable. And so very, very fragile.

"No," Havelock said at last. "Not ... anymore."

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline for Verence in relation to Ankh-Morpork is a little confused, considering the 15 year timeskip in _Wyrd Sisters_ and the shift in the Fools Guild, but I figured Discworld is confused enough internally about these things that I could fudge it for the sake of the story -_-;


End file.
